Music File Sharing Morality

This article starts by asking whether P2P file-sharing of music can be stopped. Based on a discussion of (a) the interaction among law (regulation), technology and the market and (b) relevant social norms, the paper takes the view that it may not be possible to stop file-sharing. This paper then turns to an analysis of the economics and structure of a viable licensing model that could be implemented now without legislative or technological changes. The paper argues that P2P licensing could be good business. The paper ends with a brief look at (a) whether the licensing model could be exported to media other than music and (b) international issues.

This paper addresses attempts to locate and dislocate music audiences in the context of global commercial, legal, and technical developments. The 2001 legal decision against Napster in the United States found the file share service company guilty of copyright infringement. This precedent appeared to support the recording industry. However, such legal frames have been bypassed by new softwares. Supporters see such global networks of sharing and distribution as undoing corporate control. The recording industry has responded with parallel claims of having encryption and surveillance technologies capable of globally reregulating property. However, as this article shows, there is no technical necessity and that total freedom and total enforcement are impossible. Just as globalization is reified into an inevitable process of deregulation in one instance and at the next moment it is reified into an indispensable regulatory regime, so new electronic media and global electronic networks promote neither regulation or deregulation, except in so far as the balance of social forces at any one time interprets and enacts them in such ways.

Hacking is dominantly understood to be the pursuit of the corrupt, the devious, and sometimes the deviant. The contemporary music file-sharing phenomenon, however, has compelled a revision of this understanding. Legal forms of hacking have emerged in response to the massive economic pressure and strategic lobbying capabilities of the music industry. Such virtual trespassing is now common practice in the pursuit of revenue streams that the emergence of the Internet thinned for existing capitalist enterprises. We explore aspects of this particular form of legal hacking, analysing the complexity of the relationship between music and the Internet from cultural, social and technical perspectives. We will also focus on the ongoing lobbying activities and legal actions against users of file-sharing technologies, by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). The representation of this complexity requires an in-depth analysis of socio-technical transformations rapidly proliferating within the digitalised world. We argue that in the development of P2P file-sharing technologies, users' tacit knowledge and their online habits have transformed and challenged the dominance of entrepreneurs in the selling of information goods, as also traditional ways of production, marketing, licencing and distribution of information goods. We also demonstrate how unauthorised hacking was deemed legal when employed by RIAA and MPAA, both of whom already enjoy
considerable social and material capital. We take a critical view of the way in which RIAA and MPAA both tried to undermine P2P file-sharing networks as well as justify their privacy-intrusive act, investigate how hacking and P2P technologies are constructed socio-technically, and how their meanings are negotiated through the interplay of technological
artefacts, business value and morality.

This article analyses current trends in the use of anonymity services among younger Swedes (15-25) and focuses on individuals engaging in illegal file sharing in order to better understand the rationale behind both file sharing as well as online anonymity, especially in relation to enforcement of copyright. By comparing the findings of a survey conducted on three different occasions (early 2009, late 2009 and early 2012), we measure the fluctuations in the use of anonymity services among approximately 1,000 15-25-year olds in Sweden, compare them to file sharing frequencies and, to some extent, trends within legal enforcement. The article also suggests that the key to understanding any relationship between copyright enforcement and fluctuations in online anonymity can be found in the law’s relationship to social norms in terms of legitimacy by showing a correlation between file sharing frequency and the use of anonymity services.

The findings indicate that larger proportions of frequent file sharers (downloaders) also use anonymity services more often than those who file share less. However, in comparison to the earlier surveys, the strongest increase in the use of anonymity services is found in the groups where file sharing is less frequent, suggesting that reasons for actively making oneself less traceable online other than avoiding copyright enforcement have emerged since the initial two surveys in 2009. Further, the overall increase (from 8.6% to 14.9%) in using anonymity services found for the whole group of respondents suggests both that high file sharing frequency is a driver for less traceability as well as a larger trend for online anonymity relating to other factors than mere file sharing of copyright infringing content – for example, increased governmental identification, data retention and surveillance in the online environment. The results are analysed in Merton’s terminology as file sharers and protocol architects adapting in terms of both innovation and rebellion in the sense that institutional means for achieving specific cultural goals are rejected. This means, to some extent, participating in or contributing to the construction of other means for reaching cultural goals.

This exploratory study applies and extends a new model of media attendance to examine factors that determine current levels of sharing files through peer-to-peer networks among college students, and to predict downloaders' intentions to discontinue the behavior in the future. In a multiple regression analysis, downloading activity was found to be positively related to deficient self-regulation and the expected social outcomes of downloading behavior. Downloading activity was lessened by dissatisfaction with poor quality downloads. Those who are willing to discontinue downloading are motivated by fear of punishment, but skilled and habitual downloaders were unlikely to discontinue. Normative beliefs also affected downloading. The perception that downloading was morally unacceptable was positively related to intentions to discontinue downloading, while beliefs that the behavior was morally acceptable were positively related to current downloading activity.

This special issue and its range of contributions, from both emerging and established scholars with interests in digital music distribution, provides a particular and novel depth of vision, into both developments in digital music in the time since Napster, and the current issues and discussions in the field. As illustrated by the content of this issue, research is vibrant, drawn from a rich variety of disciplinary orientations, and shows especially the crucial and ongoing importance of music online, internationally and across academic communities.

In the late twentieth-century, the mixtape was a popular way in which fans shared their taste in music with others in their social network; the author of a mixtape would record a compilation of music, often an assortment of works by various artists, onto an audiocassette, and presented this playlist as a curated, thematic listening experience for the recipient of the mixtape. Since then, the mixtape has moved beyond tangible recording media to online peer-to-peer file sharing services (such as Napster) and shared, user-curated playlists on commercial music streaming services such as Spotify and Pandora. In recent years, these playlists have been gamified –elements of competition, achievement, and self-expression have been added to curated listening experiences in games wherein players create in-game musical playlists, share these playlists with others, challenge other players to quiz games about songs in their favorite genre, etc. Viewing social video games as transmutations of the mixtape, the article focuses on ways in which these games are emerging as vehicles of self-expression and taste sharing by examining the various degrees and methods of curatorial control afforded to players (and game creators) regarding the selection and sharing of musical content in gameplay and extending into “real life.”

This exploratory study applies and extends a new model of media attendance to examine factors that determine current levels of sharing files through peer-to-peer networks among college students, and to predict downloaders’ intentions to discontinue the behavior in the future. In a multiple regression analysis, downloading activity was found to be positively related to deficient self-regulation and the expected social outcomes of downloading behavior. Downloading activity was lessened by dissatisfaction with poor quality downloads. Those who are willing to discontinue downloading are motivated by fear of punishment, but skilled and habitual downloaders were unlikely to discontinue. Normative beliefs also affected downloading. The perception that downloading was morally unacceptable was positively related to intentions to discontinue downloading, while beliefs that the behavior was morally acceptable were positively related to current downloading activity.